2005 deadliest year ever for the liberal media

[Irvine511]

[q]Media death toll 'worst' in 2005
By Peter Feuilherade
BBC Monitoring



Last year was the worst on record for the number of journalists and support staff killed in the line of duty, media watchdogs in Europe and the US say.
For the third year, Iraq was the most dangerous country for the media, with more journalists killed there since 2003 than in the entire Vietnam war.

In 2005, 63 journalists and five media assistants were killed worldwide, Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF) says.

More than 1,300 were attacked or threatened and over 800 were arrested.

"The only figure that has fallen in the past year is the number of journalists arrested (807 compared with 907 in 2004)," RSF commented.

"But this is not good enough, because every day an average of two journalists are arrested somewhere in the world just for trying to do their job."

And 126 journalists and 70 "cyber-dissidents" were in jail around the world as the year ended, according to the Paris-based group's records.

'Silenced and punished'

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) offers lower figures for the total of journalist deaths in 2005.


In many countries the bullet or the bomb is a cheap and relatively risk-free way of silencing troublesome reporting
International News Safety Institute

"Forty-seven journalists were killed in 2005, more than three-quarters of whom were murdered to silence their criticism or punish them for their work," the CPJ's annual survey found.

"Kidnappers in Iraq, political assassins in Beirut and hit men in the Philippines made murder the leading cause of work-related deaths among journalists worldwide in 2005," the organisation said.

The CPJ said its analysis had detected a long-term trend that "those who murder journalists usually go unpunished".

"Slayings were carried out with impunity about 90% of the time in 2005, a figure consistent with data collected by CPJ over more than a decade.

"Less than 15% of journalist murders since 1992 have resulted in the arrest and prosecution of those who ordered the killings," the CPJ concluded.

Impunity

The Brussels-based International News Safety Institute (INSI) included in its 2005 round-up the 48 Iranian journalists and support staff killed in a plane crash in Tehran in December.

"The accident - the biggest disaster of its kind in the news business - hiked the news media death toll for the year to 146 in 28 countries, by far the worst annual toll recorded by INSI," the group said.

It said the figure outstripped the 117 dead in 2004, itself the worst year in a decade.

"Elsewhere, around the globe, 98 journalists and critical support staff died on duty, a third of them in Iraq, the bloodiest conflict for the news media in modern times," INSI said.

Like the CPJ, the INSI report noted that impunity for the killers of journalists was widely regarded as one of the underlying causes of the continuing unacceptably high death toll of media staff worldwide.

"In many countries the bullet or the bomb is a cheap and relatively risk-free way of silencing troublesome reporting," INSI director Rodney Pinder said.

He said a lack of proper inquiries by the authorities and absence of punishment of the perpetrators encouraged more killings and intimidated other journalists into silence.

"It is high time the international community - especially democracies whose freedoms depend on freedom of information - took notice of this and moved to protect threatened journalists and punish their killers," he added.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/4581584.stm

Published: 2006/01/04 16:28:06 GMT
[/q]

 

[the rockin edge]

that's bad, especially the "more than three-quarters of whom were murdered to silence their criticism or punish them for their work,"

i'm curious why you put "liberal media" in the thread title? the article doesn't mention the word liberal.

 

[Irvine511]

i'm curious why you put "liberal media" in the thread title? the article doesn't mention the word liberal.

because i get very irritated with conspiracy theories about a liberal media when the vast majority of journalists do their jobs well, and many wind up paying the ultimate price for keeping us informed and for reporting on bad people and bad governments. journalists put up with slurs that most other professions would never have to deal with and are a convenient scapegoat when news events don't turn the way some would like, and the fabricated charge (as admitted by Bill Kristol in the late 1990s) is tossed out as an easy way for voters to themselves dismiss news they don't like or information that complicates a calcified worldview.

if anything, i'd like this thread to be one of appreciation for all the good, important work that journalists and the media do. without them, we'd have no free society. i think we should look at current administration efforts to battle the open flow of information as proof of how dangerous astute, questioning journalism is to those who lust after unbridled executive power.

so, let's hear it for journalists. and let's pause to appreciate just how important the work is that they do, how many are willing to die for their profession, and let's think twice before we dismiss them all with uninformed, lazy slurs and focus-grouped political buzzwords.

 

[nbcrusader]

Why mix a good intention with the "no such thing as liberal media" agenda?

 

[the rockin edge]

because i get very irritated with conspiracy theories about a liberal media when the vast majority of journalists do their jobs well, and many wind up paying the ultimate price for keeping us informed and for reporting on bad people and bad governments. journalists put up with slurs that most other professions would never have to deal with and are a convenient scapegoat when news events don't turn the way some would like, and the fabricated charge (as admitted by Bill Kristol in the late 1990s) is tossed out as an easy way for voters to themselves dismiss news they don't like or information that complicates a calcified worldview.

ok, i guessed it would be something like that.

I just don't really see what that has to do with the amount who died last year, it seems like another topic?

however I do agree with your point

if anything, i'd like this thread to be one of appreciation for all the good, important work that journalists and the media do. without them, we'd have no free society. i think we should look at current administration efforts to battle the open flow of information as proof of how dangerous astute, questioning journalism is to those who lust after unbridled executive power.

so, let's hear it for journalists. and let's pause to appreciate just how important the work is that they do, how many are willing to die for their profession, and let's think twice before we dismiss them all with uninformed, lazy slurs and focus-grouped political buzzwords.

 

[deep]

US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist

Monday January 9, 2006



American troops in Baghdad yesterday blasted their way into the home of an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian and Channel 4, firing bullets into the bedroom where he was sleeping with his wife and children.
Ali Fadhil, who two months ago won the Foreign Press Association young journalist of the year award, was hooded and taken for questioning. He was released hours later.

Dr Fadhil is working with Guardian Films on an investigation for Channel 4's Dispatches programme into claims that tens of millions of dollars worth of Iraqi funds held by the Americans and British have been misused or misappropriated.

The troops told Dr Fadhil that they were looking for an Iraqi insurgent and seized video tapes he had shot for the programme. These have not yet been returned.

The director of the film, Callum Macrae, said yesterday: "The timing and nature of this raid is extremely disturbing. It is only a few days since we first approached the US authorities and told them Ali was doing this investigation, and asked them then to grant him an interview about our findings.

"We need a convincing assurance from the American authorities that this terrifying experience was not harassment and a crude attempt to discourage Ali's investigation."

Dr Fadhil was asleep with his wife, their three-year-old daughter, Sarah, and seven-month-old son, Adam, when the troops forced their way in.

"They fired into the bedroom where we were sleeping, then three soldiers came in. They rolled me on to the floor and tied my hands. When I tried to ask them what they were looking for they just told me to shut up," he said.

 

[A_Wanderer]

Recalling the incident where the stringer was right and ready to film "insurgents" pull an electoral worker from his car and blow his brains out in the middle of the street I am interested in seeing how this ends up.